


Anywhere You Go, I Follow

by emquin



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst, Buck Centric, Buck can talk to ghosts, Character Death, Ficlet, Ghosts, Happy Ending, M/M, Supernatural - Freeform, buddie, mediator Buck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:26:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24915340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emquin/pseuds/emquin
Summary: Buck always believed it to be a curse. The whole being able to see and talk to ghosts thing. That was why his abilities went mostly ignored until there came a time when he actually needed them.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 29
Kudos: 126





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by The Mediator series by Meg Cabot during my re-read I had the very beginning of this first part just there in my mind and I HAD to write it. I also decided to make this fic a challenge for myself. Giving myself the goal of using about 1k words per part and covering everything I wanted in each part in that limit of words. 
> 
> The quote comes from Rabbit Heart by Florence and the Machine.

**Part One:**

" _This is a gift, it comes with a price. Who is the lamb and who is the knife?"_

* * *

Blood was everywhere. The one thing that the internet and the many books that Buck had had to reference hadn’t mentioned was how messy blood was. Maybe it was one of those things that you were just supposed to know. In truth, Buck could admit to himself that he was maybe completely in over his head. 

The sigils that he’d drawn on the ground looked crude and although Buck had double and triple checked that they matched the pictures on his phone, he still checked them one last time before he sat down and placed the picture in the circle formed by the blood drawn marks and the candles and then he began to chant. 

The words felt awkward and foreign in his mouth, they were a language that Buck couldn’t understand. Something ancient that Buck doubted anyone living actually spoke still. But nonetheless, he knew the words to be powerful. 

And when it happened, he was certain that they held power. 

The portal opened right in the middle of the circle, the candles he’d lit framing it with a halo of light. Fog crawled out of the portal, taking over the room and although Buck knew what came next, he also knew that nothing could have prepared him for it — for facing the other plane. 

“You better fucking be in there,” Buck said and then taking a deep breath he stepped in. 

For a moment, all he experienced was falling but it was falling with the speed slowed down to about half, but he still landed hard and stumbled to the ground after what felt like several long minutes. 

The room he found himself in was all mirrors. Mirrors and more mirrors in all sizes, covering every inch of the space, even the floor and Buck was completely alone until he wasn’t. And he realized fairly quickly that he wasn’t in the astral plane quite yet but in the lobby. 

Out of one of the bigger mirrors stepped out a woman with long flowing blond-white hair that fluttered behind her almost like a cape. Her eyes were a familiar blue that Buck looked into every morning when he looked into a mirror. Her gossamer dress was white and translucent and otherworldly. Everything about her was otherworldly. 

“Hi, mom,” Buck said. 

Her face was youthful, not a wrinkle in sight and a glow surrounded her. She gazed at him for a long moment before she stepped forward, one hand outstretched. “Evan, what are you doing here?”

“I need to see him,” Buck said. “Mom, I need to see him.” He didn’t add why or what he wanted to do once he found him. 

His mom touched his cheek and her touch felt cold not like being touched by another person with cold hands but like he’d been touched by a wet rag. 

“Evan…”

“Please. Please.” And his emotion...the stuff that had been bubbling up inside and that he’d pushed aside so that he could figure out how to do this, it was threatening to come up and take over. 

“Evan, you know I—”

“I am asking for one thing. One simple thing. I...I need this. I need this. Please. I just want to say goodbye.” It hurt when his sob was wrenched out of him unbidden. His eyes were flooded with tears that he was refusing to let fall. Instead they just blurred his vision. 

“Evan, I’m—”

Buck lunged at her, clutching at any part of her that he could, mostly her dress which felt like silk and she held up his weight. For the longest moment he was just sobbing and she never reacted other than her hands, long fingered with long pointed nails coming up to cup his face. 

“Sweetheart, you know I can’t. If I let you go on there is no guarantee that you’d be able to come back and that...I couldn’t live with myself if—”

“You’re not alive!” Buck yelled, his words echoed off of the mirrors and his mother flinched. 

“You don’t belong here,” she said but made no move to send him away even though Buck was sure that his mother probably could do that. 

Really, it all began when Buck was very young. Or maybe, it had begun sometime when the powers that be cursed them. One of his ancestors that is. That’s what it was, and what it had always been to Buck. A curse. Growing up, they had always been around. Ghosts. To Buck they were just like a normal living person except that ghosts had a slight glow to them. When he was little, Buck didn’t even really know the difference especially since the ghosts didn’t come to him. They came for his mother. And then later, they came for Maddie. 

Ghosts didn’t respect any part of Buck’s life growing up. It didn’t matter that it was bathtime and he and his mom were in the middle of playing with the rainbow rubber ducks or his boats. It didn’t matter that his mom was reading him a book. Or that she was getting him ready to go out and play in the snow. It didn’t matter that they were going to bake cookies. They needed help and his mom would jump at the chance to do it. Maddie was never as devoted, but she took the whole thing seriously too especially after their mom died because then she felt more responsible. 

Buck had long ago refused his part in the whole tour guide to the afterlife thing. And yes, he did have a choice in it. So had his sister, and Buck could only presume that his mother had as well. Maddie had chosen to take up the mantle and Buck decided he wanted nothing to do with it. He wanted to make a difference for the living, not the dead. 

After his mom’s death via ghostly specter who didn’t take to death kindly, Buck had wanted even less to do with it. The powers that be — and that was a whole mystery upon itself — they had allowed his mother to retain a connection to the living plane as gratitude for her hard work...and they had also let Buck off the hook. He didn’t have to be a mediator.

In all reality, his powers had never gone away. Buck just did his best to ignore them...and it became easy as time went on to not see the ghosts. Rarely did any show up in search of him and in those cases, Buck did the only thing he could do which was point them to his sister. She was the mediator, Buck was the guy that gave the ghosts directions. 

Everything changed when Eddie died. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there it is. Part One. I promise it isn’t as angsty as it seems and I’ll admit that this was an odd fic to write and that I couldn’t quite figure it out in this and the second part. I did want it to be a twist on the usual mediator or ghost fic. 
> 
> I’m mostly finished writing this fic, so updates will be quick like every other day. Let me know what you all thought. :)
> 
> And if you liked it please like/reblog [this part on tumblr](https://inawickedlittletown.tumblr.com/post/621922654377639936/anywhere-you-go-i-follow-17).


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote comes from West Coast by Imagine Dragons.

**Part Two**

_“See the devil at my door. I see the future of the ones that I've ignored. I guess I was born to be at war”_

* * *

On the day when Buck left home with all his things packed into the trunk of his car and no exact idea where he was going, he really and finally tore all the last ties to the other plane. 

The thing about his mom’s death was that she didn’t become a ghost. Well, not really. She was a guardian..someone that stood in between in what Buck liked to consider the foyer before what came next. It meant that even though she was dead and her afterlife revolved around the dead, and she could visit the living plane and her children, she did it rarely. And when Buck left home, he left her behind too. 

Maddie had left before Buck did, but she was a part of that world in a way that Buck wasn’t. At one point, he’d been just a little bit jealous every time that Maddie told him about the things she was learning from their dead mother until he reminded himself that she was dead because of what she was and what she did and he wanted no part of it. He’d tried to get Maddie to let it be and when she went away to college and met Doug, it had almost felt like maybe she was going to leave it. 

Doug of course had always felt wrong to Buck. But his sister was stubborn and Buck had been the only one to see her fight over it with their mom after Doug proposed and Maddie said yes. 

Buck would always regret how he’d waved his mother off and ignored her that night when she came to him. 

“You have to talk sense to her, Buck. She’ll listen to you. He’s no good...you know that...I know you do…”

At no point in that conversation had his mother bothered to ask about Buck and everything that had been going wrong in his life. It had been all about Maddie. Later, Buck realized that there had been a reason for that. 

His mother often knew things that they didn’t...that was just the nature of her part in the great design. But Buck had been a teenager then and a bit angsty and angry at the world that had taken his mother and that had left him with a not very good father and a sister that was torn in so many directions so that he didn’t have her fully either. 

“You just want her to keep mediating and doing your bidding,” Buck had snarled at his mom. “It’s all you care about...the ghosts and whatever else. Let her live a life. I don’t like him, but she does. She says she loves him.” 

Buck didn’t really see his mother after that. At least, he didn’t interact with her much even though sometimes he was sure that she was around watching him. But for a few years, after he left home, he was free of it. No ghosts, no hearing stories from Maddie, Buck didn’t even really hear from his dad. And it was a relief...it felt like he finally had normality. 

Growing up as he had did mean that Buck had never really known what he wanted to do with his life. He’d wandered around the country for a while picking up odd jobs to make a living and then moving again. That was how he met Collins, a retired Navy SEAL that made Buck wonder if maybe that was what he was meant to do and he retained it in the back of his mind even as he kept moving and kept doing and wound up in South America for a few months learning how to properly mix drinks. It wasn’t until he was back in the states that he figured he might as well go for it. 

Buck would never tell anyone, but it was a ghost that made him reconsider. The young dead man made him realize that it wasn’t for him...that he couldn’t be involved in a job that required him to not care and to sometimes have to do the hard thing of letting people die. 

Someone suggested he become a firefighter and Buck figured he might as well try it. He had no idea how integral the job would be to his life because if he was saving people and keeping them from dying then they didn’t become ghosts. Buck still didn’t see ghosts often enough...and when he did they didn’t really approach him for help. It wasn’t until he was three months into the job that that boy let go and died on impact with the ground and that night Buck woke up to him crying in his bedroom. 

Buck hadn’t known what to do other than to talk to him. He wasn’t trained like Maddie and he didn’t want it to become a habit for ghosts to be coming to him, but he wasn’t heartless and the guy had died on Buck’s watch so he helped him and went and spoke to the guy’s sister. And it felt good, to know he helped him move on. 

A few days after all of that, Buck was sure he heard his mother say something to him while he was in the locker room at the station, but he didn’t try to look for her and he certainly didn’t want to see her. 

When Maddie came back into his life, Buck did his best to help her and she buried herself in work...in helping people cross over and move on and while she never said it, Buck knew that the mediating thing had affected her marriage on top of the Doug factor of it all. Still, she knew his feelings about the ghosts and the great beyond and so she kept him out of it and only mentioned their mother a few times. 

With Maddie around, any of the rare ghosts he came upon, he had somewhere to send. He didn’t concern himself with the other plane or what happened after you died. He was a firefighter, his focus was keeping people alive and preventing them from becoming ghosts. It was more important. 

But when Eddie died, it was the first time that Buck found himself wishing that he knew everything he’d scorned especially because for some reason the ghost of Eddie never appeared. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone reading. Let me know what you all thought of this part. 
> 
> And if you liked it please like/reblog [this part on tumblr](https://inawickedlittletown.tumblr.com/post/622092169126281217/anywhere-you-go-i-follow-27).


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quote comes from Cosmic Love by Florence and the Machine

**Part Three**

_“I took the stars from my eyes, and then I made a map and knew that somehow I could find my way back”_

* * *

Eddie was brain dead. It was that conclusive, won’t wake up no matter how long they left him connected to all the machines, dead. He was only alive because the machines were keeping his heart beating and his oxygen flowing. But he was gone. 

And instead of crying at his bedside or offering any comfort that he could to Christopher, or even insisting that the doctors were wrong and Eddie would pull through, Buck had looked and looked for Eddie’s ghost. He was sure Bobby and the rest thought that he was crazy for not reacting, at least not like he’d done when they couldn’t get to Eddie and he was digging at the mud like that would ever worked to get him to Eddie. 

The places that ghosts usually showed up first was the place where they died. Since he wasn’t in the hospital, Buck had gone to look around where it all happened during that rescue of that little boy and where Eddie had cut his rope. There was no Eddie there either. He also wasn’t at the station, or at his house, or following Christopher around like Buck had expected him to. 

So, Buck had called Maddie. 

“I don’t feel him anywhere,” Maddie admitted. “Maybe he just moved on.” 

But he couldn’t have. That implied that Eddie had nothing to hold him back from just going on to whatever came next. It implied that not even Christopher — and much less Buck — held Eddie as a tether to the living plane. It didn’t make sense but Maddie reminded him that things didn’t always have to make sense.

“He wouldn’t just move on,” Buck insisted. “Not him. Talk to her. Ask her. Please.”

“All she’ll confirm is what we already know, Buck. I’m sorry, but he’s dead.” 

The guilty expression on her face told him something else. 

“Or she sent him along,” Buck said. 

“She’s just doing her duty—”

“She’s meddling!” Buck screamed. He called for his mom, tried to reach out but got nothing. Maddie thought he was too upset to see her. 

“Take me to her, then,” Buck had said and pleaded with her but Maddie refused even through her tears because Buck could tell that it was hurting her to say no to him. But Maddie took the whole thing seriously. She didn’t break rules...especially when she knew they would change nothing. 

Buck figured that was why his mother had helped Eddie go through faster, because she thought it would be worse if Buck saw him as a ghost. She didn’t understand that Buck needed that even if Eddie was truly gone. Maddie seemed to think the same. Maybe they thought that Buck would press Eddie into sticking around instead of moving on. 

But Buck wasn’t Maddie. He didn’t care for the rules that he never learned...he didn’t care about the powers that be and whatever they might need. All he wanted was to see Eddie even if it was just to say goodbye or to bring a message back to Christopher because that was the least that Eddie deserved. Buck didn’t allow himself to hope that he could pull off more than that.

So, Buck hadn’t let himself wallow in his feelings. Instead, he did what he did best. He researched. 

After all, there was one way to reach the other plane. For a mediator the door was always open as long as you found it. Maddie could do it at will without all the extra stuff he had to go through. Buck had never learned how, but since Buck knew who he had to see, it made everything even easier. There were three pictures of his mom in his apartment. He used his favorite, she was alone and standing in the kitchen in the house he grew up in and a part of him hated that he might lose it entirely during the ritual, but he used it anyway. 

Chicken blood hadn’t been hard to come by — a nice replacement for human blood — even if the butcher had eyed him strangely when he’d gone to buy it. 

None of it had prepared him for actually seeing his mom, or for having her tell him no. 

“Why did you take him?” Buck asked when she didn’t just boot him back to the living plane. 

“He had no reason to stay...he came willingly. He’ll be at rest soon, Buck. When his body dies, he’ll be at rest. Sweetheart, you have to let him go.”

Buck shook his head. “He has a son,” he pleaded. 

“So did I,” his mom said. “You’ve turned out just fine.”

“I need to see him. I need to see Eddie. I need to—”

“No.” She shook her head and she at least had the dignity of looking sorry for denying him. 

“Then, you give me no choice,” Buck said. “If I am this, cursed the way that none of us should have been, then I’m going to make it count. You cannot stop a mediator from travelling to the other plane...not even me.” 

“Evan you—”

Buck knew just enough to know that the guardian didn’t open the door, she just guarded it. And while his mother still held plenty of power, she was still dead. Buck wasn’t. 

“I’m sorry,” Buck said. “But I’m also not sorry at all.” 

Then, he punched her, jabbed his elbow at her stomach and then touched the mirror she’d come from. It rippled at his touch like water. Buck glanced back once and then stepped through. 

At once he felt two distinct things. His body was falling backward just as the other part of him stepped through the glass. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought about this part. 
> 
> And if you liked it please like/reblog [this part on tumblr](https://inawickedlittletown.tumblr.com/post/622274640033824768/anywhere-you-go-i-follow-37).


	4. Part Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quote comes from All I Want by Kodaline.

**Part Four**

_“All I want is nothing more to hear you knocking at my door. 'Cause if I could see your face once more I could die a happy man I'm sure”_

* * *

Through the mirror was a hallway with doors that dotted it just a few feet from each other. Fog rolled over everything, making it hard to see more than the golden door knobs. Buck ignored it all, moving forward. Out of his pocket, he pulled out the picture of Eddie that he brought with him and he thought hard about Eddie even as he kept moving.

The astral plane was an inbetween. It was the before the thing that came next and moving past death and Buck’s entire hope lay in finding Eddie there.

Walking on and on and on brought forth more fog, but he knew he had to keep moving, like a pull towards something or someone. Eddie.

When Buck first met Eddie, he immediately figured that Eddie was there to take the place that Buck had carved out for himself at the 118. Eddie was fit — his abs were something to behold — and he was also good at his job. He’d been in the Army — had a medal to show for it — and he didn’t hesitate one bit to do the job. Buck had hated him a little. Until he realized that Eddie wasn’t competing with him and that Eddie was a good guy. And once he decided to stop hating him, he couldn’t help but like him.

It took them days to become friends, weeks to become best friends, and just a few months for Buck to realize that he was in love with Eddie. Not that it mattered because Eddie was a father and he was married and all of that was complicated enough before Shannon died.

Buck knew she was dead before he even saw Eddie come out to the waiting room, because her ghost had shown up first and Buck hadn’t known what to do. One thing that Buck had realized pretty early on in his avoidance of his powers, was that new ghosts didn’t have a good hold of their haunting abilities and they also couldn’t immediately tell if someone was a mediator. So, Shannon didn’t realize that Buck could see her. Not until later that night when she showed up at his apartment angry and scared and ready to rage at him about her death.

Shannon was the one to tell Buck that she had asked Eddie for a divorce. She was the one to explain that she’d been planning on putting Christopher first and being his mom and how she’d known that she didn’t love Eddie. And it had all been taken away from her.

“And he doesn’t love me,” she’d said sad and with a voice so small.

“How did you know to come here?” Buck had asked.

“Because they love you and I...I just knew you could help me. You could help them.”

Buck couldn’t turn her over to Maddie. The thing about ghosts was that they existed because they had some unfinished business. Buck had heard enough stories from Maddie to know that not all of them were easy things to finish and that some ghosts were petty little fucks whose unfinished business was screwing someone over and making their life difficult. That’s how hauntings happened. Ghosts also didn’t completely affect the living world unless they had an emotion big enough for it...or if they had been dead for so long that they’d started interacting with the physical world enough to get used to it.

With Shannon, it was obvious that she was a ghost because of Eddie and Christopher.

“What do you want me to tell them?” Buck asked.

“I want you to give Eddie something,” Shannon said.

So, Buck had found himself driving over to her apartment and breaking in through a window and finding a shoebox. It was full of letters written to Christopher.

“I wrote him almost every day that I was gone,” Shannon told Buck. “Apologizing for leaving...on his birthdays, Christmas. There’s a few for Eddie there too. I just want them to get them. So that they know I loved them.”

Buck had settled for mailing them to Eddie on Shannon’s behalf, putting everything in one big manilla envelope.

Shannon hung around until after the letters were received and then she asked Buck to tell Christopher she loved him and then before she left she’d looked straight at him with such a knowing look that it made Buck realize that she knew how he felt about Eddie.

“I’m glad they have you. And it’s okay, Buck. Love them. I can’t. You should tell them.”

That night, Buck had gotten bit tipsy and cried for Eddie and for Chris and especially for Shannon.

“Promise me, you’ll tell him,” had been her last words before she disappeared.

Buck had broken that promise. He didn’t say anything. At first because Eddie was mourning and Christopher was a little boy and his mom had died and Buck knew what that was like. Then, Buck had been crushed by a ladder truck...and then there was a tsunami — Buck tried not to think about the number of ghosts he’d seen or how bad Maddie had looked for weeks afterwards. Buck had had other things to worry about later, when nothing he did could get him his job back, or how he felt like the first place he’d ever belonged in had disappeared.

Timing was everything and it wasn’t on Buck’s side when it came to Eddie. Things had been getting better. He and Eddie had finally gotten back to normal and Buck had been trying to figure out a way to tell Eddie how he felt. Buck had just wanted to make sure it was the right time but maybe the right time should have been at any given moment. After all, Buck had decided that it didn’t matter if Eddie never felt the same way as long as Buck could get his feelings off his chest.

And then...then Eddie had to go down to get that little boy and the storm happened and they couldn’t get to him.

It was Buck that found him in the water, floating face up but passed out with barely a pulse and not breathing.

Buck had felt like he wasn’t breathing the entire time that Chim and Hen worked on him. Bobby had been holding him up and holding him back as Eddie was taken away in the ambulance.

After that things were a bit of a blur until the doctors were telling him and Bobby that the likelihood of Eddie waking up was low. Low enough that the doctor had looked grave and that they wanted to know Eddie’s medical directives. That was when Buck had steeled himself to see Eddie’s ghost, except that he never found him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you all thought of this part. :)
> 
> And if you liked it please like/reblog [this part on tumblr](https://inawickedlittletown.tumblr.com/post/622556936175534080/anywhere-you-go-i-follow-47).


	5. Part Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we have an Eddie focused chapter at last. Enjoy. 
> 
> The quote comes from Human by Of Monsters and Men.

**Part Five**

_ “When the words weigh heavy on the heart I am lost and led only by the stars” _

* * *

Being dead was...well, it wasn’t at all what Eddie had expected. Not that he’d ever spent a lot of time thinking about death or what came after it, but everyone wondered about it. It was the great question and Eddie hadn’t particularly wanted it answered. 

The woman that had appeared to him, ethereal and beautiful and ageless hadn’t said much aside from telling him that he was dead and that she would help him move forward. He didn’t need to linger. Eddie had agreed and let her take him and maybe he’d wondered a little about why her eyes were so familiar to him and why they made him want to say no. 

The afterlife turned out to be a hallway. Or a series of hallways that kept going and going and with doors that never opened for him. The woman let him in through a fog filled door but didn’t follow him and he was left on his own wondering if this was what it was supposed to be or if there was something else. 

Being dead also meant that none of it really mattered. It was weird, like being absent of anything that had tethered him to life even if he still knew about those things. His son for instance, the 118, and Buck too. It was all distant, though, because as much as Eddie knew he should be missing everyone and wanting to be with them, there was a strange sense of calm that told him it would all be just fine. Like some sort of assurance that there was some greater plan. Some greater design that meant death wasn’t the end. 

Time moved. Or didn’t. There was no way of knowing. Eddie wasn’t tired and he didn’t know if he’d walked for a few hours or a few days or if it had been longer or even if it mattered. All he knew was that he was waiting. The mystery was in finding out what he awaited and yet Eddie found that he was somehow patient. 

Sometimes, he thought that something was pulling at him like a beckoning invitation. Those were the times that Buck came to mind and with him regret. Most of his regret centered around how much Buck meant to him and how Eddie had never properly told him. Death gave him the perspective to realize that he did love him and that it was enough. 

Any time that Eddie made the attempt to listen to the pull towards Buck, something stopped him and kept him right where he was. It was strange, the way that the hallway behaved. How it was a contradiction since it led nowhere and yet it made him feel like he was going somewhere. The next thing, he supposed, whenever a door opened for him. 

A couple of times, Eddie saw other dead people and they wandered like he did and ignored him, so he ignored them too. Once, he thought that he saw Maddie and his heart caught in his throat when he tried to scream out her name because she couldn’t be dead too. For Buck’s sake, she couldn’t...she just couldn’t be dead. For a while, Eddie searched for her and he didn’t know if he was hoping that she was around or that she wasn’t. 

When Eddie was alive, he never thought about what death would be like after it happened. Mostly, he’d thought about what it would mean for everyone else. So it was strange that those were the things that didn’t seem important. That, nothing kept him and held him back from going forward and leaving everything and everyone behind.

Eddie didn’t remember how he died. Only that there had been a lot of water and darkness. And then there had been Her with her otherworldly glow and her smile and her blue eyes. 

The uneventfulness of being dead didn’t get old or tiring because it just was and Eddie didn’t really care how long it took for whatever came next. Still, when something different suddenly happened, Eddie couldn’t help but be curious. 

He’d been walking around when he felt everything shake and then it went back to normal except that something was different and he started to feel like someone was calling to him and Eddie had to answer that pull so he walked towards where the pull came from and this time nothing was stopping him from finding out. It felt like he was walking for a long while until he spotted a figure way off that was walking towards him. 

Eddie knew before he even saw him fully through the fog, that it was Buck. And when he realized that, he also realized why the eyes on that woman had been haunting him. They were Buck’s eyes. The next thing to hit him was a feeling of despair because Buck shouldn’t be there. If he was there...if Buck was dead then…

“Buck,” Eddie said once they were feet apart. 

“There you are,” Buck said with a watery smile. He didn’t move at once, but instead hung back as if he was trying to make sure that Eddie was there and then he moved and he threw himself at Eddie. 

Eddie caught him, let Buck wrap his arms around his neck. He felt Buck’s tears fall on his neck and it was strange to be able to feel and touch. 

“I thought...I thought maybe you weren’t here anymore,” Buck said against his shoulder. 

Eddie held him back, happy to feel the warmth that came off of Buck and that surrounded him and let him suddenly feel again and remember that he was dead and that he had a son and family and...and Buck. But Buck was there and— 

“Why are you here? Are you dead? Buck are you—”

And a horrible thought struck Eddie, then, that maybe it would all be okay because Buck was with him. 

“Not dead,” Buck said as he pulled back. His eyes were still misty but he was smiling and his hands were on Eddie’s shoulders and then suddenly they moved up to his cheeks, holding Eddie’s face and the two of them just looked at each other

“I came to get you back,” Buck said eventually. 

“You...but that doesn’t make any sense. How could you—”

“That...that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that you come back with me.”

Buck’s hands were still on Eddie’s cheeks and his thumbs swept tears that Eddie didn’t even realize were falling off his cheeks. 

“Buck, I’m...but I’m dead.” 

And Buck laughed. He laughed and he pulled Eddie even closer and he kissed Eddie’s temple. “You’re only mostly dead,” he said. “There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead...that’s still alive.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last lines that Buck says come from The Princess Bride because it felt so weirdly fitting. 
> 
> I also am additing one more part to this, so Part Eight will be the last one. Let me know what you all thought of this one. :)
> 
> And if you liked it please like/reblog [this part on tumblr](https://inawickedlittletown.tumblr.com/post/622908791182262272/anywhere-you-go-i-follow-58).


	6. Part Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quote comes from Hopeless Wanderer by Mumford & Sons.

**Part Six**

_“So when your hope's on fire but you know your desire, don't hold a glass over the flame”_

* * *

He was trying not to just blurt out how much he loved him. Buck was sure that he wasn’t doing a fantastic job at keeping those feelings at bay especially with how he had to just keep touching Eddie. His hands wouldn’t leave him. Buck just...he needed to be sure that Eddie was real. A ghost, but real nonetheless. Touch made him real.

“So, what happens now?”

“Now, we have to get out of here,” Buck said and he hoped that his mom wouldn’t give him a hard time. After all, technically, ghosts that made it to the astral plane weren’t supposed to return to the living one.

“How?” Eddie asked.

Eddie had been there too long, Buck realized. It was all there in the way that he didn’t seem all that phased about everything. His emotions had been turned down way low. It made Buck wonder what would happen when they were back on the living plane and everything returned. Ghosts were ruled by their emotions. It was what made them capable of affecting the living plane. It was why they could haunt a place and why they made things complicated. A ghost had killed his mother after all.

“We go the way I came,” Buck said.

It wasn’t a long walk, but Buck held Eddie’s hand the whole way and Eddie must not have minded because he never pulled his hand away.

“Buck,” Eddie said eventually.

“Yeah?”

“How’s Christopher?” It wasn’t worry that brought the question forth but instead curiosity.

Buck felt a bit guilty for not knowing. It was just that his focus had been on this. He’d needed to do this and bring Eddie back. For himself and for Christopher.

“I don’t...I don’t know,” Buck said. “Sorry.”

Eddie gave a short nod.

“I’m sure he’s okay,” Buck added. Everyone cared about Chris. Between Carla and Eddie’s Abuela and Pepa he’d be okay. “And he’ll be even better when we get back.”

It wasn’t a mirror on this side, instead it was a space concentrated with fog that hid whatever was behind.

“It might feel weird,” Buck warned Eddie. “Don’t let go of my hand.”

The space was wide enough they could cross it together. It felt almost like going through a waterfall except that it wasn’t wet but instead it made him feel like every part of his skin had been pricked by a small needle. They were in the mirror room again, then, and Buck’s body lay on the ground.

“What — Buck that’s—”

“Can’t have a body where we were,” Buck said.

Eddie’s hold on his hand tightened. “But then, you—”

“I’m okay,” Buck assured him. “Just have to get back in my body. And then we can go.”

Eddie nodded, but he still held onto Buck as if letting him go would mean losing him and Buck felt a wave of love come over him because of it. When their eyes met, Buck could see worry. Maybe his emotions were already returning.

“You can let go, Eddie,” Buck said.

Eddie nodded but it still took him a moment to let go and Buck noticed that the moment he did his ghostly face went even paler and that his hands were shaking. His eyes never left Buck as Buck lowered himself into his body. And Buck could see the panic within when Buck was reconnecting to his body and it took a few seconds for him to get back.

“Buck?”

With a gasp, he came to.

“I’m fine. Now we have to get out of here.”

“I died,” Eddie said. “I died and I...I was somewhere else and I didn’t. Shit. Christopher. And and and—” his eyes flashed to Buck. “You! You! I never...oh god, I never told you. I, I—”

“You can tell me everything later,” Buck said and he grabbed both of Eddie’s hands. “Right now, I have to bring you back to life and then we’ll have all the time in the world.”

It was a bit surprising that his mother wasn’t there. She must have gone somewhere, though, and he didn’t exactly want to wait for her except that the portal he opened was gone and he didn’t know how he was supposed to get him and Eddie back.

“What happens now?” Eddie asked.

Buck wracked his mind for an answer, for memories of his childhood to remind him of what his mom had told him and Maddie back then. He’d had to go through the trouble of getting the blood and doing all that research in books that spoke about the whole thing vaguely and in internet sites that were half run-down and looked more like they would give his computer a virus than actual answers, to get there. None of that had been a necessity if he’d remembered how that aspect of his powers workers.

“I don’t know,” Buck admitted. “She was supposed to still be here but of course she’s…” he trailed off as the whole room became surrounded by light and then there she was, his mother in her ethereal state and appearing next to her, Maddie.

“Buck,” Maddie said and rushed towards them, her hands reaching to grasp his forearm. She didn’t even seem to notice Eddie at first and then she gasped. “You found him.”

Buck nodded. “Yeah. Have to get him back to his body.”

Maddie froze. “That’s...Buck, this isn’t how it works. If he’s a ghost he has to move on. He can’t—”

“He can,” Buck insisted. “Now, how do we get out of here?”

“Should have learned when I did,” she said almost teasing.

“Maddie. Please.”

Maddie nodded but before she could show him or take him and Eddie back, his mom stepped towards them first. Buck stepped in front of Eddie protectively.

“Despite the circumstances, it was good to see you, Evan. And to meet your Eddie. I won’t stop you or keep you any longer. I hope...I hope this goes the way you want it. His future is quite literally in your hands, Evan. I hope to see you again soon.”

Buck gave her a smile. “Bye, mom.”

“That’s your mom,” Buck heard Eddie whisper as Maddie took both of their hands and then it felt a little like he was floating for a few seconds but then it was over and when he opened his eyes he was on the floor in his apartment next to his candles.

Maddie was standing to his right and Eddie who was glowing just a little — enough to differentiate that he wasn’t alive — was on his left on the ground, looking disoriented. This was what Buck had been wondering about. How would this feel to Eddie after being in the astral plane.

“Is he going to be okay?” Buck asked.

Maddie nodded.

“We have to get to the hospital,” she said. “And, Buck, I really don’t know if this will work.”

“I know,” Buck said. “But I have to try. And if it doesn’t...I want to be able to let him say goodbye to Christopher. She stole that from him.”

“She was only trying to help.”

Buck shook his head. “Mads, she was meddling.”

“She loves you,” she said.

“I guess I actually do know that now.”

“Do you?” Maddie asked.

“She could have stopped me. But she let me bring him with me.” He didn’t add that it made him even more hopeful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more parts left! Let me know what you thought. 
> 
> And if you liked it please like/reblog [this part on tumblr](https://inawickedlittletown.tumblr.com/post/623182854277529600/anywhere-you-go-i-follow-68).


	7. Part Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quote comes from You're My Best Friend by Queen.

**Part Seven**

_“Ooh, you make me live. Whatever this world can give to me it's you, you're all I see.”_

* * *

Bobby was there in the hospital room when they arrived. He couldn’t see the ghostly Eddie walking in behind Buck, but he stood up to greet both Buck and Maddie. 

“There you are,” Bobby said. “You ran out of here so fast.”

“I had something to take care of,” Buck said. 

Eddie’s hand landed on his shoulder, but he wasn’t trying to get Buck’s attention, instead his eyes were fixed on the Eddie on the bed because that Eddie was attached to so many wires and machines and there was nothing about him to suggest that he would survive and wake up. Buck couldn’t quite handle looking at him and thinking about how it might not work and Eddie might remain a ghost or that he might have to move on and properly leave them all. 

“Well you’re here now,” Bobby said. “He’d want you here, I think.”

“I do,” Eddie said and this time he was looking at Buck. 

“Have there been any changes?” Maddie asked. “Is it…”

“The same,” Bobby said. “His grandmother and aunt think they’ll wait for his parents to fly out to decide on what to do but it doesn’t look good.” 

“He’ll wake up,” Buck said with conviction. 

Maddie gave him a look and Bobby didn’t seem to know what to say, but Buck’s words weren’t meant for them. They were for Eddie. They were meant to reassure him. 

“Well, it’s good you’re here,” Bobby said. “I didn’t want to leave him on his own.” 

Bobby pat Buck’s shoulder and then walked out.

“What happened to me?” Eddie asked. He looked hesitant to approach himself. 

“We were on a call. You went down to rescue a boy stuck in a well. You saved him but then it was you that was trapped down there and when we found you...well, you were practically drowned and they said you were—” the words didn’t want to come out. 

“Brain dead,” Eddie finished. “Which means I’m dead. Look at me.” He waved his hands around as if to show how ghostly he was. 

“And I’m going to fix that,” Buck said. 

Eddie didn’t look like he believed him and Buck wasn’t sure if he believed it either. He just knew he had to try. That’s what it had all been about and all of the stuff he’d ignored like the possibility that his best friend wouldn’t wake up. All of it had been one final and last attempt to keep Eddie even if it meant that he couldn’t be at his bedside.

“How?” Eddie asked. 

“Maddie?” Buck asked. 

“You touch him,” Maddie said. “Touch yourself, that is.” 

Eddie made a face at that and Maddie swatted at him. “Really? Is that the time?” 

“You said it.” 

Buck let out a breath. “Go on,” he said and bumped his shoulder against Eddie’s. 

Eddie didn’t move. Instead, he turned and looked directly at Buck. “What happens if this doesn’t work? Do I go back to where you found me and wait to move on. Do I disappear entirely or—”

“You’d stay a ghost,” Maddie said. “And you won’t need to go, if you don’t want to. But if you die — really die — that’s the natural course and what you should do otherwise—”

“I wouldn’t mind if you haunted me forever,” Buck said. 

“Buck,” Maddie said and she shook her head but Buck didn’t care. 

“I should say it now. Maybe you need the push or the motivation to stay alive. Or I’m doing it because I have to get it out. Eddie, I need you in my life alive or dead...I just need you to stick around.”

“I want to be around,” Eddie said and then he glanced at his prone body and then back at Buck. He stepped closer to Buck and he looked nervous. “I have to do this now because I don’t know if I’ll have the nerve later...or even if I could physically do it. Considering.”

“What?” 

Eddie kissed him. 

Kissing a ghost was not at all like kissing a living person. Ghosts weren’t warm and they didn’t really taste like anything but they were still solid and they had lips and it was still nice. Kissing Eddie even though he was ghost, it was still better than kissing any living or dead person because it was Eddie. 

Maddie coughed. “Should get on with it.” 

“Am I going to remember any of this?” Eddie asked. 

Buck looked to Maddie, the true expert. She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe. Never done this before.” 

“Well, if I don’t, I fully expect a repeat of that, Buck.” 

Buck pecked his lips quickly. “Yes. But you have to get back in there first.”

It wasn’t flashy or much of anything else. One moment Eddie was there and the next he touched his own hand and his ghostly self disappeared. 

“Does that mean it worked?”

“I don’t know,” Maddie said. 

Buck dropped down into the seat by Eddie’s bed. He grabbed Eddie’s hand in the next moment, the same one that ghost Eddie had touched. His hand was warm and it felt right in his and when Eddie’s fingers twitched he jumped up. 

“Maddie, he moved! Call a doctor. A nurse. Anyone.”

Eddie’s fingers tightened around his and Buck squeezed back and only then realized that his fingers were still stained with the blood from earlier. He just had to hope no one asked about it but none of that mattered. Eddie’s hand was twitching in his and when the doctors came in and started to check him over, he didn’t let go. 

“You did it,” Maddie said. 

“I guess those powers were useful after all,” Buck said. 

Eddie didn’t wake up that night. Or even the next morning. But one thing that the doctors did do was remove him from some of the machines. Then, late the next afternoon he woke up when Buck was sitting at his side and when their eyes met, Buck was sure that Eddie remembered everything. They just didn’t get a chance to talk about it. Not with everyone that was in and out of the room — visitors and hospital staff alike.

So, it wasn’t until Eddie was discharged that they actually found a moment to talk about everything. 

“I died,” Eddie said. “I was a ghost. You can see ghosts. You saved me.” And then after a long pause. “You kissed me.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more part left! Let me know what you thought of this one. 
> 
> And if you liked it please like/reblog [this part on tumblr](https://inawickedlittletown.tumblr.com/post/623365149924999168/anywhere-you-go-i-follow-78).


	8. Part Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here is the last part. Notes at the bottom. 
> 
> The quote comes from Mess Is Mine by Vance Joy.

**Part Eight**

_“You're the reason that I feel so strong. The reason that I'm hanging on. You know you gave me all the time, or did I give enough of mine?”_

* * *

Buck told him everything. He told Eddie about what it had been like to grow up with his powers and how his mom died because of a ghost she was mediating. He told him about Maddie and how while she loved her powers, Buck had abhorred them until they let him get Eddie back. 

Eddie got to hear about Buck going out to buy chicken blood after it seemed like it was the only way he’d get to the astral plane on his own. How he’d had to do research online in places that he’d never ventured to and how he’d ended up at the public library where he got lucky and they had a copy of the single book that had any concrete information. 

Buck told him all about how his powers worked and what Buck knew of the afterlife...which, technically, he knew nothing of it. He just knew that there was something more. Rest or reincarnation or maybe something else entirely. 

“I think my mom knows, but she’ll never tell us. Not allowed.” 

“And how did you know you could do this at all?” Eddie asked. 

They were in Buck’s apartment and it was late. Christopher was asleep on the couch. Buck had cleaned up all the blood a few days earlier, but he still felt like he could see the markings sometimes. 

“I didn’t. But I had to try and instinct...my instincts told me it was what I needed to do. Life wouldn’t have been the same without you.” 

Talking about his powers had been easier than his feelings even knowing that Eddie likely felt the same. 

Still, if there was one thing to learn from Eddie’s death, it was that Buck couldn’t keep hiding how he felt and that he had to finally honor Shannon’s wishes. 

Buck even told Eddie about seeing her after she died and how much she did love him and Christopher. 

“She didn’t want to go,” Buck told him. “She wanted to be his mom. And...and she knew I loved you.”

Eddie had smiled at her memory. 

When Eddie kissed him, it was ten times better than the single kiss they shared when Eddie was a ghost. There was more complexity to it, warmth, and even an underlying passion that couldn’t be present in the ghost of Eddie Diaz, but which came alive in the living version. 

“I love you,” Buck had told him fiercely. 

“Kinda figured that out from how you went and got me out of the astral plane. I don’t think anyone else would have found and done that for me. I love you too, Buck.”

Buck smiled back at him. “I better not have to go find you there again.” 

“I think the next time, I’ll be going there by choice and probably with you at my side.” 

It felt morbid to hear Eddie talk about death like that, but then Buck had been around death his whole life. The living and dead were so much the same to him. 

It was a few weeks after the whole thing went down that Buck saw another ghost. It was an older man of around seventy who wanted Buck just to pass a message to his partner. Buck did as asked and then because he wanted to, he decided to escort the guy into the astral plane personally. It wasn’t hard strangely enough. Maddie had told him how and the rest was instinct. 

Afterwards, he stopped to visit with his mom. 

“Did you know he would live?” he asked her. 

“Only once you brought him back. Not before. He was set to die, Buck. It’s why I took him.” 

Buck still didn’t understand. “What changed?” 

She smiled her knowing smile. “You changed everything. Your need for him...the lengths to which you’d go for him. Your pure unconditional love...and how much he wanted to be back with you too. It changed his fate.” 

“I’d follow him anywhere if it meant getting to keep him,” Buck said. 

His mom cupped his face. “You’ve always loved so steadfastly,” she said. “And I’m sorry I hurt you. Back then and with taking him.”

Buck didn’t know if it was in that moment or much later once he and Eddie had discussed why Buck had never considered using his gift — and Eddie always emphasized that it was a gift and not a curse — Buck thought that maybe he did need to talk to ghosts and to help them because they still did need help and Buck shouldn’t have been able to ignore people in need for as long as he did. 

“Just don’t go kissing any ghosts,” Eddie had said teasingly. 

“No. I just want to keep kissing you,” Buck said. 

“Sounds like an idea and a plan,” Eddie said and he tugged Buck to him. 

He was solid and warm and touching him and kissing him and being with him was everything. When Buck thought that he saw a ghost out of the corner of his eye just as their lips met, Buck closed his eyes and pretended he didn’t. He may have decided to use his powers, but that didn’t mean they could ever come first not against the living. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are at the end. 
> 
> This fic came to me in a dream...well, the image of Buck and the blood and the candles came to me in a dream that I couldn’t shake. 
> 
> So at 3am in the morning I wrote that first part and I wanted to know what came next but also what came before. It was a bit of a writing experiment in that I only allowed myself a word count of about 1k to arrive somewhere. It was a bit of a challenge for a fun one and it allowed me to look at the fic and the idea itself in parts. 
> 
> Even now that I’m done with it, I don’t quite know what it was meant to be because tbh I did a lot of making it up as I wrote. Thank you to anyone that took the time to read this. And I hope you enjoyed it. 
> 
> And if you liked it please like/reblog [this part on tumblr](https://inawickedlittletown.tumblr.com/post/623450544970842112/anywhere-you-go-i-follow-88).


End file.
